You are currently browsing the forum as an unregistered guest. Many forum features, such as posting, searching and gallery privileges are unavailable to guests. Register now to become a member of PlanetCalypsoForum.com, and enjoy all of the specialized features of this very active and informative Entropia Universe community!

New Control Panel Option - Filter New Posts

It is now (once again) possible to exclude individual forums from appearing in the New Posts search results.

Recently, 711 responded to requests from members for more front page articles by approving a new group of writers for the PCF News Team. Together, the News Team will bring you up-to-date information and stories from around Calypso, including current events, updates, and player spotlights.

The members of the News Team come from all walks of life and from all over the world. They each share a passion for Entropia Universe and a desire to bring the news to you from the front lines to the front page of PlanetCalypsoForum.

ButchButch arrived at Port Atlantis in December 2007 and pretty much just likes to remain low key. He will be using his enjoyment of graphics to help where it is needed in the newsroom. In real life he is 48, lives in Adelaide Australia, and creates websites and graphics for a living. His pastimes are playing the guitar, photography and computer graphics.

RunnerJ. Runner ('Runner') has been an Entropia player since 2004. He is the founder and leader of the society Children of Silver. He loves to talk to and help out new players, and occasionally hosts trivia games at Nea's Place. As part of the News Team, he brings a great awareness of the history and lore of Entropia Universe, and a drive to deliver the news when it needs to be delivered. Outside of Entropia, Runner lives in Newfoundland, Canada, and is studying English Literature in university. He keeps several blogs and creates crossword puzzles for his university's student newspaper.

SericaSerica arrived on Calypso in 2006 and was best known for her work as a pilot until VU 10, her keen participation in WoF, and as the society leader of Antipodean Army. As Newsroom Editor, Serica will be using her lifetime skills in management and facilitation to coordinate the work of the rest of the Newsteam. Serica's real life, on Australia's Gold Coast, revolves around her husband, daughter, and two grandchildren.

AceGeorgeSkywalker ('Ace') landed on Calypso after reading about an asteroid sale in a newspaper. In Entropia, he likes to explore space and all the different planets. His main profession in-game is hunting but he occasionally also mines and crafts. One of his in-game hobbies is collecting unusual items, which probably comes from being an archaeologist many years ago. His current profession in real life is teaching, but he has worked in many different fields.

JimmyJimmyB ('Oni') arrived on Calypso late in 2005 having read about the asteroid sale. He focuses on hunting in-game, recently having unlocked Commando, with occasional mining spells for some variety. He also enjoys helping with the community effort to figure out how various aspects of the game work. Some of his newsroom articles will focus on the findings of this community research. In real-life, Jimmy is 35 and lives in London working as a developer/analyst/mathematician with a small startup company modelling and trading on sports and financial markets. Outside of maths and gaming, his hobbies include comedy and sci-fi, watching Everton play football, and whining about the London property market.

MagyarMagyar Republic joined the Entropia Universe community in January 2010. Long a fan of the theories of gaming proposed in books like Synthetic Worlds and Virtual Justice, Magyar sees Entropia Universe as a pioneer in a virtual world industry that as the 21st century progresses will become commonplace. He believes the participants of Entropia Universe may, as time progresses, see themselves as very lucky to have participated in this type of gaming while in its infancy. His work with the community as a news staffer will revolve around increasing the understanding of how this particular type of game works, the thoughts that go into it, and how to build a community surrounding it. As an avid attendee of gaming expos and lectures, and an avid player of this genre, he hopes to combine these perspectives to bring to the players knowledge they can relate to in essays they will enjoy.

Keep your eyes on the front page of PCF! The News Team is eager to get to work. If you see any of them ingame, be sure to say hello, and let them know what you want to see on the Front Page of your forum!

Retrospect – a year ago
Roughly one year has passed since the relaunch of Planet Calypso since the Entropia Universe upgrade to the new graphics engine. It is one year during which First Planet Company has learned a lot and accomplished even more. We have added close to 200 missions, revamped areas, and added a newcomer experience to reduce the threshold and increase the knowledge given to a new player. All this has been done with a small but very dedicated and talented team, whom I am very proud of.

In the meantime, there have been a lot of updates to the Entropia platform which, by mentioning a very distinct example, has been seen on Calypso in the forms of vehicles and other add-ons. Calypso veterans have also seen older game play systems coming back in a converted form, for instance Mindforce. Some systems are still missing compared to the pre-VU10 version – which I will address later in this statement.

The newcomer experience
One of the main areas of focus has been the newcomer experience. With the arrival of the Calypso Gateway new players got a calm area to explore the mechanics and theme of Planet Calypso. We introduced a new layer in the real cash economy with items and action on a lesser scale but still working within the same rules as the rest of the Entropia RCE. This allowed us to ease players into the unique Calypso economy environment. With the new Port Atlantis we added a stage two to the experience, adding the Gateway items and mobs to the “real” Calypso. For the time being we will stop with the newcomer focus as we wait for new features in the Entropia platform to take it to the next level – once that arrives we will revisit both the Gateway and the Port Atlantis area for touch-ups.

Storyline, mythos and lore
Often when we describe Planet Calypso we use the phrase “the colonist MMO” or “the colonist experience”. With it we imply that basic premise of the player taking the role as a colonist arriving to a new planet. In the future, we will continue to push this aspect even more and shift focus to what is generally called mythos or lore. To further tie in background, history and society to the context of Calypso’s essence – a lot more “why” will be explained. Early on, years back, the main lore distributor was the items info descriptions on items. Now we have more venues to use – missions, items, events and also – very important – the history not only created by the FPC writers, but also the history that you, the community, is part of building. This creates a vibrant and beautiful collaboration of what Calypso is and what it will become, which will become more evident in the immediate future.

I want to give more credit to the heroes of Calypso – event organizers, leaders, daredevils, helpers and the like. To reward the passionate and dedicated players who live the Calypso dream. FPC is taking steps to integrate this kind of collaboration even more and has also requested new features from MindArk to add systems to the platform that help this cause. Acknowledgment and recognition is very important.

Community
Finally Planet Calypso has an official forum, a place of discussion, feedback and socializing on the web. Next year the PCF will be given even more focus when it comes to how Planet Calypso is presented on the web, how the community will interact and how curious players can find a haven of information. During 2011 marketing activities are planned to increase awareness of Planet Calypso, with the goal to add to the population of mankind’s first colony.

Old systems
There are still a few systems from the pre-VU10 era that MindArk has yet to reintroduce. These are hangars, taming, mentor, beauty/makeup, and beacons. MindArk is reluctant to share ETA’s on the systems but claim “it will come”. Below is the latest info supplied to FPC.

Hangars will be put in the first FPC release after the new year. Initially the spaceships will not be a “space taxi” as before (as “space” will come in a later MindArk release). Instead, the space ships will work as unlimited flying vehicles. The hangars will once space is opened serve as an important part of the system.

Taming is being developed by MindArk at the moment. The system will be enhanced and given more purpose and game play compared to the old system. A MindArk rep even hinted of being able to ride flying mobs. Is there a storyline hook for Calypso here, are you going to side with tech or nature?

The mentor system is being redesigned from the ground up. The initial information is to add layers to it to allow good and proven mentors access to special areas (like the Gateway) and also to connect mentors to various programmes like recruitment on the web, on Facebook, Twitter, etc. I believe it is of high importance to allow the dedicated players the tools to do their great deed, in order to let the newcomers come in and learn about the world of Calypso.

Beauty/makeup is an important system for personal expression and creativity. I know it started development but was put on hold for the time being. I speculate that it can have something to do with the rumors of an upcoming avatar system update (maybe we will see a system where textures aren’t mirrored as they are today, allowing for more unique looks?).

Beacon missions are going to be part of the current missions system, but greatly expanded to allow for more than just robot ships – with it FPC can add a variety of instanced “dungeons” with different themes and styles.

Current pipeline
The immediate FPC pipeline for the rest of the year consists of two releases; one that will include a dedicated event with assets and scope never before seen at FPC. It will be very interesting to see the community response to this as it will act as a guideline for future FPC created events.
We are also in the process of finalizing this year’s Christmas sale item. True to the tradition, December will feature a massive investment opportunity for the bold, much in the same vein as Treasure Island, Club Neverdie and Crystal Palace the years before it. This time it will be a newly constructed entity. More on this will emerge during November.

Next year holds a lot of surprises, more missions, new mobs and much more focus on the above mentioned storyline and lore. MindArk is also taking a look at the “Big Three” (hunting, mining, and crafting) to see what kind of updates can be done to enhance the game play, excitement and enjoyment of those systems. Overall, I believe 2010 has taken several big steps towards a better Planet Calypso experience, but 2011 is going to be a big leap, especially when all the pieces begin to fall into place.

This FrontPage needs to be filled with articles about in-game happening, interviews with players and societies, reports about unusual activities and all the things that makes Calypso a place where you want to be.

So I’m looking for news-writers to help me on this mission!

You don’t have to have a journalistic degree in real life, and it doesn’t have to be super fancy. What you do is simply write up an article, publish it on forum either via making a thread or in your blog –Send me the link via personal message, say you want it to be published on front-page and I’ll take a look at it. The article will of course be published under your name.

We’re in need of new tutorials for our new forum, and who more natural to write these then players themselves.

Clear and concise writing is the number one priority. Try to keep every tutorial within the limit of 1500 words. Plus points for including pictures and/or tutorial videos (upload to YouTube for easy forum embedding, send link in mail)

Edit: I realize some of you have problems keeping to the 1500 maximum in especially the large professions such as Hunting, Mining and Manufacturing. I'll accept two documents where the second is <Profession>:Advanced. if you feel you need to explain further. Keep the first document to 1500 words still though.

Send your entries to the following e-mail before November 1st to partake in the competition. Mark the mail with the name of the competition and the Tutorial.
Example: Tutorial Competition: Beauty System. Remember to sign the mail with your full in-game name and forum name.

For every chosen guide, the writer will be handed 1 (one) piece of Community Recognition Armor and a 6 (six) month Modified Forum Membership as thanks for their hard work.

Should your tutorial entry be selected, you agree to grant First Planet Company a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, publicly display, modify, adapt, translate, archive, store, and create derivative works from such tutorial content, in any form, format, or medium, of any kind now known or later developed. Without limiting the generality of the previous sentence, you authorize First Planet Company to share the tutorial content across all websites affiliated with PlanetCalypsoForum.com and PlanetCalypso.com, to include the tutorial content in a searchable format accessible by users of PlanetCalypsoForum.com, PlanetCalypso.com and affiliated web sites, to place advertisements in close proximity to such tutorial content.

Oh wow, huh? I know it’ll seem like a big change, and I bet a lot of you didn’t actually believe we’d ever have an official forum. But here it is!

Going from EntropiaForum to Planet Calypso Forum won’t be a very large change right off the bat. The rules are mostly the same, the staff is pretty much the same and the community... well that part is up to you! In due time we’ll be developing the forum further, but right now we’ll just focus on getting the forum up and running, and getting used to the new scenery. (I hope you like it!)

Remember to read our updated rules, ToU and Privacy Policy!

So this is the frontpage, huh? Been a while since I posted anything on a forum frontpage!
From now on you won’t have to run over to the Gateway to get the latest news on FPC’s development; it’ll come directly to PCF’s frontpage, to make things a little easier for you and us.

So to test it out a bit, here’s a teaser from our next Content Release (Scheduled for early October):

Enjoy!
Hanne Gulbrandsen
Community Manager, PCF Admin
First Planet Company